Boing Boing

Boing Boing

Coding challenge goes wrong: creator refuses to pay $5000 prize money

Ellsworth Toohey
Jan 14, 2025
∙ Paid

Southern chivalry - argument versus clubs, 1856, by John L. Magee, Public Domain

When Mike Goldman offered $5,000 to anyone who could compress a randomly-generated file of their chosen size in early 2001, he thought his money was perfectly safe. After all, it's mathematically impossible to compress truly random data. But Patrick Craig spotted a loophole …

User's avatar

Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of Boing Boing.

Or purchase a paid subscription.
Ellsworth Toohey's avatar
A guest post by
Ellsworth Toohey
Contributor to Boing Boing
Subscribe to Ellsworth
© 2025 Happy Mutants LLC · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture